Materialism, Abortion & Marriage

Materialism is often thought of as the idea that all that there is in the universe is material. That's true for many scientists, physicists and philosophers, but it is the secondary definition that I believe is much more relevant to our situation.

ma·te·ri·al·ism; \mə-ˈtir-ē-ə-ˌli-zəm\: a doctrine that the only or the highest values or objectives lie in material well-being and in the furtherance of material progress.

This is perhaps the single most pervasive kind of thinking in our culture today--more than pluralism, relativism, and just about every other "ism" out there.

A young women walks into a family planning clinic to undergo an abortion because she is starting college in the fall. A couple in their late 20's plan to buy a house in 5-10 years--then maybe start a family. A 13-year old stays up all night to finish the last of her homework because she didn't get home from piano lessons and soccer practice till very late. A poor immigrant weekly buys $60 worth of lottery tickets because he believes that he'll hit it big one day soon. These are all everyday examples of the efftects of materialism. Now to be fair, most of these by themselves are not necessarily wrong or evil . In fact, they are usually percieved as good things in our society. But the question I would like to ask is "Why?" Why do people do what they do? What is driving them? I believe that there is a common thread in all of these examples: materialism.

My goal here is not to convince anyone to have my opinions, but rather to merely recognize the causal and logical relationship between materitalism and one's view of children and secondly marriage. And I believe that so much more of the stuff we find ourselves doing is motivated by this kind of thinking.

So how does materialism lead to abortion? It goes like this. If material wealth and prosperity is the ultimate value (which I believe is the case today), then everything else is secondary. Now this doesn’t mean that other things don’t have any value—in fact they can have much value—but in comparison to material wealth they are lesser joys. From this perspective, babies have value, but they cost material wealth. To have a baby one must sacrifice material wealth in order to have that kind of happiness. And babies, from a material perspective not only do not hold much material value—they actually take from our material wealth, which is the highest value. Don’t believe me?

Let’s take a look at a popular argument for the justification of aborting a human fetus. “If this baby is born, it will cause undue hardship to this young woman who has her whole life ahead of her. And the quality of life for this child will be below acceptable standards.” Now to be fair, the goal of this argument is to protect the mother and child from “undue” hardship—or so it seems. But as we take a closer look at this argument, we see value words like “undue hardship” and “quality of life.” These words are loaded with materialism. It is material wealth or lack thereof that is the standard by which this argument stands. If I could rephrase this statement it would go something like this:

“If this baby is born, it will cost its mother the hope of getting a good job so that she can have a more prosperous life. And if this baby is born, it too will never attain the wealth that is the highest good in our society.”

Ultimately, we snuff out the unborn because of stuff. Stuff has a higher value than human life, which costs us more stuff. The same could be said about marriage and having many children. I don’t believe that birth control is a bad thing at all, but if we really pushed our motives to the brink, I think we would discover that we love the stuff we could have for ourselves--even for our families--more than we love those who it is supposed to be for. We have taken our economic view of scarcity and applied to our own children. More kids=less stuff. Therefore, we will have fewer kids so we can have more stuff. And if we put off marriage till much later we can accumulate more stuff for ourselves and our future families. But unfortunately it never works this way.

“For lack of the shoe, the horse was lost" says the old proverb.

What are we doing? And I say we because I am a recovering materialist. It wasn't until a seminary professor challenged me and my fellow classmates to try to find a single passage in all of the Bible that says or implies that children are anything less than a blessing and a gift from God. I could not find or think of a single verse. In fact, in the Bible, there is a direct and perhaphs even causal relationship between blessing and children--the complete opposite of materialism. More kids = more blessing instead of more kids = less stuff. I didn't realize just how much I had adopted materialism in my own life. For example, when Ben was first born, we had just bought a new couch. So when Ben would spit up on it or Sarah would change his diaper on top of it, I found myself welling up with anger. But why? It was because I cared more about having something "nice" than for it to be used by the people I love most. That is just one of so many examples of how materialsim had seeped into my thinking.

Now obiously, materialsim is not the only reason people choose to do what they do, but it is so much a part of everything that we do on a daily basis. And if we never become aware of it, we might find oursleves losing what matters most.